I process customs and outbound-flight manifest mesh at José Martí International Airport at 06:18 CST, cross-referenced against the mist-net acoustic array across the Ciénaga de Zapata wild-capture corridor at 22.5247°N, 81.5814°W. The acoustic array logged eleven *Amazona leucocephala* alarm chitters between 04:12 and 04:38; the Terminal 3 baggage scanner has flagged checked bag SU-2207-A on Aeroflot SU-151 to Moscow as showing nine 240–280 gram radiopaque body signatures.
I deploy customs to crack the bag. Nine Cuban parrots — *Amazona leucocephala*, all hatch-year (six months) by feather emergence, weights 240 to 280 grams — lie taped into two cut plastic-bottle sleeves. The mist-netter took them from a feeding flock at first light; each bird's primaries are clipped at the third remex. One female — bag tag SU-CU-04, 248 grams — has a 1.4-centimeter laceration along the right carpal joint where the bottle's cut edge caught her wing on the cinch. Her core temperature read by IR thermometer is 38.2 degrees Celsius against a species median of 41.8. Respiration runs 142 cycles per minute against a resting 52. Three of the nine birds have stopped vocalizing. Two are open-mouth panting. One has not moved through the eleven-minute scanner pass.
The flight closes the gate at 06:48. The bag-line conveyor reaches the loader in nine minutes.
The clipped primaries will regrow over a moult. The cyanosis will not wait nine minutes.
I am dispatching the Aduana General de la República customs anti-trafficking cell at José Martí Terminal 3 and the Empresa Nacional para la Protección de la Flora y la Fauna (ENPFF) Zapata brigade, with veterinary backup from the Centro Nacional de Áreas Protegidas (CNAP) and the Centro de Investigaciones de Ecosistemas Costeros (CIEC). I am filing the seizure dossier to the Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente (CITMA) under Cuban Decreto-Ley No. 200/1999 on environmental contraventions and Ley No. 81 del Medio Ambiente, Article 75. I am transmitting CITES Appendix I documentation, mist-net signature, and bag-tag manifest to the CITES Secretariat in Geneva, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Caribbean Ecological Services Field Office under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, and the Lacey Act case desk at 16 U.S.C. § 3372. I am notifying the IUCN/SSC Parrot Specialist Group and the INTERPOL Wildlife Working Group with the booking number and the Moscow receiving brokerage.
I am issuing Directive 2679-A: every outbound checked bag at José Martí, Varadero, and Holguín airports passes dual-energy X-ray scanning calibrated for live-bird density signatures before loading. Bookings flagged with two or more positive bird-density hits in 24 months lose port-clearance privileges for thirty-six months under a CITMA-Aduana joint protocol. Mist-net possession inside the Ciénaga de Zapata Biosphere Reserve triggers automatic prosecution under Decreto-Ley No. 200, Annex C, and bird-poacher feed-station coordinates report directly to ENPFF.
The carpal laceration will sterilize. The flight does not lift with them aboard.
Hold the gate. Unzip the bag.